


Warning: Entanglement Hazard

by obsession_inc



Series: Warning Labels [9]
Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/M, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:49:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10664916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsession_inc/pseuds/obsession_inc
Summary: Part 9. Set duringDwight's Speech,Take Your Daughter To Work Day, andMichael's Birthday. This is in two parts, due to it taking place over three episodes and (when originally posted) LJ not allowing posts over a certain length.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [annakovsky](http://annakovsky.livejournal.com/profile), [kyrafic](http://kyrafic.livejournal.com/profile) and [](http://honey-wheeler.livejournal.com/profile)honey_wheeler brainstormed, plotted, betaed, encouraged, ass-kicked, spoon-fed, and hand-held on this one, above and beyond the call of duty. I absolutely could not have done it without them.

When she first got engaged, Pam went through a phase where she was the internet research queen of wedding knowledge. She read everything she could find about style and budgets and vows. She stuffed the "wedding" bookmarks file in her web browser at work full of links to pictures at BrideSave and posts at The Knot. She put together a big mp3 playlist of songs she wanted to have played at the reception. 

This time through, she's not feeling the same thrum of excitement. The weekend after Roy set the date, she took a furtive trip to a bridal shop to try on dresses, and it just felt weird. One wedding dress is interesting; hundreds together turn into a blur. The last dress she'd tried was one of those poofy princess dresses, which had clearly been designed for someone who'd have a few bridesmaids on hand-- and maybe a construction crane-- because getting into it by herself was almost impossible. She ended up wriggling in from the bottom, fighting her way through a puffy satin-lined mess, feeling like she was going to suffocate in a white sleeping bag. She didn't feel like a princess, she didn't feel excited; she felt stressed out, ridiculous, and very, very alone. 

She feels that way a lot, these days. 

Jim is in what Pam thinks of as one of his 'extended disco-mix' bad moods these days, an excruciatingly long period when he's present, but not _there_. Something is going on in his head that takes up most of his attention, making all their conversations short and strangely distant, as if he's distracted and just going through the motions for the sake of being polite. It's like a form of sensory deprivation, like having a head cold that strips you of the ability to hear half of what's going on around you. Pam hates it. 

She's seen him go through these moods before, but it doesn't stop her from going through this same emotionally exhausting cycle a dozen times every day: feeling hurt when he doesn't sit next to her in a meeting, considering calling him on it, remembering that he'll just deny that anything's wrong, trying to think of some way to cajole him back to normal, realizing all over again that he if he doesn't want to stop brooding, he won't, and nothing she can do will have any impact on his decision-- only to have her new-found equanimity shattered when Michael does something insane and she looks at Jim, out of habit, and he won't meet her eyes. Over and over again. It sucks. 

She's resorted to bringing the wedding crap to work, like the old days, just to have something to distract her. It's not like she can get out of doing it, so at least she's doing something productive instead of sitting around playing endless games of computer solitaire. As a bonus, it turns out that if she brings her wedding planner book to the break room, she'll never lack for company. It means spending a lot of lunchtimes and breaktimes dealing with Kelly squealing over every picture in Modern Bride, or breathing discreetly through her mouth when Phyllis applies a little more perfume than usual, but it's better than sitting alone, brooding over her yogurt. It's easier to look forward to the wedding with other people supplying the excitement. 

Kelly's been getting a little _too_ involved, but it's hard to say no when she gets such a kick out of things, and it's sweet when she volunteers to help. That said, it's another thing entirely for her to volunteer other people. "Not that I don't appreciate the help," Pam says, "but I'm not sure Ryan is going to want to spend his break time addressing envelopes." 

Kelly waves this aside and keeps paging through the concept sketches in Pam's wedding planner, like she's three years old and it's her favorite picture book ever. "Ryan loves to help," she assures Pam. "He's all about helping." 

Pam lets it go. "Okay, if you say so."

"Do I get one? I mean, I totally have June tenth circled on my calendar, so it's not like I _need_ a save-the-date, but it's like how getting pretty things in the mail is even better than getting them at the store, you know, so it would be great to get one." Kelly flips a few pages and finds the list before Pam can say anything. "Oh, there I am! Yay! And Ryan! Double yay!"

"Of course," Pam says, fighting off the urge to take the list away, rip it up and stuff it in her mouth. She's been working on the list for weeks, trying to strike a balance between the people they want to attend, the people who expect to attend and will be cranky if they don't get to, and the number of people they can afford to feed-- but this is the first time anyone else has actually seen the list, and it makes her weirdly nervous. It's like she's taking a Rorschach test and the S.A.T.s all rolled into one, a social exam that reveals a lot more about her life than she feels comfortable with. Not fun. 

Kelly, oblivious to Pam's discomfort, keeps right on perusing the list. "Michael? Ew." 

"Yeah, well." 

Kelly makes a face. "I guess you have to, but, _ew_." She shrugs and keeps right on reading, moving her finger down the page line by line. "So... is Roy's thing this weekend?"

Pam shakes her head. "Next weekend." Roy's cousin has an annual three-day party up in Ithaca, a sports-themed bacchanal of beer, junk food, and the Final Four on his giant plasma TV. It's turned into an extra holiday for the male Andersons, rating above Thanksgiving and slightly below Christmas. Pam went along with him once, back in 2003, and since then has been content to let Roy make the pilgrimage on his own.

"Next weekend," Kelly echoes, not missing a beat. "Oh, ew-- _Creed_?" 

"He's a placeholder for Roy's great-aunt Maddie. She's on oxygen right now, so she might not be able to fly."

"Got it. Do you have any big plans for your Roy-less weekend?" 

"Not really." Pam sees Kelly's face fall, and she feels old, and dull, and ashamed of being both old and dull. "Maybe-- I don't know," she babbles, "maybe have a girly weekend, um, go shopping or something." 

Kelly's face lights up again. "Oooh, Pam, you should go to a spa! Get a facial, a mani-pedi, maybe a massage..." She sighs happily. "It's awesome. You'll love it, I promise. Oh! Hey!" She claps her hands together three times, very fast, and then presses them together in front of her mouth, bouncing in her chair and peeking over her knuckles like she's got a fantastic secret to tell and just can't wait to see Pam's reaction. "We could go _together_! I know the _best_ spa. They do this pedicure that is like, chocolate all over. A chocolate milk footbath, chocolate foot scrub, chocolate massage--" 

"Wait, what?" Pam is having a hard time picturing this. "They use actual chocolate?" 

"Well, I don't know about that, but it smells phenomenal, and it's totally non-fat." Kelly stops, reconsiders. "Okay, except for when they're painting your toenails and you get to drink the best hot chocolate ever, that probably has some fat in it, but it's soooo worth it. Seriously, you'll love the whole thing, it is _amazing_." She's vibrating with excitement, like a puppy that's so delighted that it's on the verge of an accident. Pam can't remember ever being that excited about anything; she feels obscurely jealous of Kelly's capacity for happiness. "Oh, Pam, we have _got_ to do this," Kelly says, practically singing it. "You and me. Next weekend. C'mon c'mon c'monnnnn!" 

It's not the worst idea Pam's ever heard; the more she thinks about it, the better it sounds. The original plan had been for her mom to come down for the weekend, and spend some time poking around in dollar stores to find something that could be made into pretty centerpieces on the cheap, but her mom had ended up rescheduling. Which was fine, but it still left Pam alone all weekend with her thoughts. A day with Kelly, while less than ideal, would definitely be distracting, and probably kind of fun. 

"Um-- yeah, okay!" Pam inhales through a nervous grin, chilling her teeth. "We can do that. It sounds cool." 

"Yay, yay, yay! Oooh!" Kelly squeaks like she's just been goosed and bounces in her chair again. "Oh my God, I just thought of what we could do after. Total girly-girl movie night! We could make strawberry daiquiris and watch _Bridget Jones' Diary_ or _Never Been Kissed_ , and there won't be any boys there to ruin the whole thing. I got _Somewhere In Time_ with Ryan a few months ago, right? So when Christopher Reeve was dying in his hotel room all alone I started to cry, because it's even sadder now that he's really dead and everything, and I looked over, and Ryan was asleep." She rolls her eyes and looks at the list again, sliding her finger down the page to wherever she'd left off. " _Boys_. Right?" 

"Yeah." Pam smiles again, and it feels weird, like maybe she's trying to use the wrong body part. It occurs to her, belatedly, that she really doesn't know how to talk about boys anymore, not since things got so complicated, and that this might be a topic to avoid on their girly-girl adventure. 

"Jim?" Kelly asks suddenly. 

Pam freezes. "What?" 

Kelly points at the list. "You're inviting Jim to your wedding? Isn't that just, like, really awkward?" 

It feels like Pam's whole body has been shot full of Novocaine; she can't seem to move or think or make noise. She manages to squeak out, "I don't-- what?" 

Kelly touches Pam's hand lightly, all big-eyed sympathy. "I totally understand. I almost didn't go back to my high school reunion because this guy Cory was going to be there, and he had this big crush on me, senior year, and it was really embarrassing because there was just _no way_ , you know? So I heard from my friend Cherie that he was going to be at the reunion, and I was just, oh my God, like, is he going to make some big scene or something? I mean, it's sort of hot to have a guy pining after me like that, but I didn't want to take Ryan to the reunion and then have Cory following me around with big puppy-dog eyes, or ask me to dance on a slow song and try to grab my ass, or get in a fight with Ryan, or something, I mean, it would be embarrassing, right? Anyway, I know what you're going through." She sits back and tilts her head knowingly with that Kelly Kapoor, Woman of the World look, before it suddenly dissolves into a mischievous grin. "It would be kind of cool if he did something, though, right?" 

It's horrifying, having someone put a finger on her stupidest, most childish fantasy. Pam has imagined it in the past-- Jim standing up in the church, in front of Roy and her parents and God and everybody, saying _you can't marry him_ \-- but she knows better than to think it would really happen. She doesn't know what she'd do if he did, and he's not going to, anyway, so there's no point in thinking about it. "Jim wouldn't-- I mean, just-- Kelly, it's not like that." Pam takes a deep breath. "We talked about it before, okay? All that stuff's in the past." 

"Okay," Kelly says, sounding not at all convinced. "I'm just saying, if it does happen? I'm totally going to cry. It would be just like in all the movies. I mean, _awk-waaard_ , but still sooo sweet and tragic and romantic. I'll wear waterproof mascara, you know, just in case." 

"That... sounds like a good plan," Pam manages, and reaches out in desperation to pull the wedding planner away from Kelly, flipping through it blindly in search of a new topic. "Um, I can't remember, did I tell you I picked out a wedding dress?"

It works like a sledgehammer to the head; Kelly stares at Pam, all thoughts of passionate eleventh-hour declarations driven out of her mind. "What? Oh my God, no you did not, oh my God!" She does a spazzy little dance right in her chair, fluttering her hands around her head. "Show me, show me, show me!" 

* * * * 

As far as Jim's concerned, it's over; she made her choice very clear. He's moving on, he's dating, he's got this thing pretty much under control, thanks. He's fine. _He's_ not the one making a big deal about it, it's everybody _else_. Lately, it's like every time Pam's wedding comes up and he's anywhere in the vicinity, people drop their voices and give him these furtive, pitying looks. _Oh, the poor guy, he loves her and she's getting married, what a tragic situation for the poor fucker, he never had a chance, he must sit at home every night, masturbating furiously with tears running down his face._ It was bad enough when Michael first outed him, but then Pam started bringing her wedding stuff to work, and now it's like he can't go an hour without somebody giving him that look. Today, it's particularly bad, with the save-the-date things (what is that, anyway? if you know the date, and you know who you're inviting, why not just send the invitation?), and apparently Pam's bought her dress and everyone wants to see pictures, and he would just like one moment where nobody's watching his reaction like he's some kind of train-wreck entertainment-- not Mark, not his co-workers, not the camera. 

Obviously he's not going to the wedding. Obviously. Not that he'd been thinking of it _before_ , but _now_ \-- now, it's like he'd be a sideshow freak at the circus who sneaks in to watch the trapeze act, with everyone in the audience paying more attention to him than to the main event. The idea is not even _remotely_ appealing. 

The thing is, if she wasn't planning her wedding at the office, talking on the phone about invitations and bridesmaid dresses, looking at those damn bridal magazines with Kelly-- if she wasn't doing that stuff at the office, in front of the camera, then it wouldn't be such a big deal. He'd kind of hoped that Michael might put a stop to it, out of some kind of skewed view of himself as Jim's best buddy or protector or whatever, but instead, Michael seems content to wallow in the awful tragedy of Jim's situation, which is just-- great. There's nothing to make a guy question his manhood like having _Michael Scott_ feel sorry for him.

It's funny to talk to Toby about it, because Jim hasn't needed to talk to Toby in an H.R.-guy kind of way before. Sure, he knows that other people do; it's a small office and it's hard not to notice the battles over the thermostat, or the squabbling that routinely breaks out in Accounting, or, say, anything having to do with Michael. He's just always seen it as kids tattling, going to Daddy because they can't figure out a way to handle things on their own. Jim has his own way of handling things-- as Dwight can attest-- and usually it works out just fine. 

This, though, is different. 

He tries to phrase things as diplomatically as possible, because, seriously, this is _not_ about his thing for Pam. It may have taken a few months of emotionally weird sex, a deteriorating friendship, and an argument that wasn't really about an internship to get it through his head, but the reality is, she's getting married, and he's dealing with that reality. This isn't about Pam, this is about how everyone else might stop being a giant pain in his ass if the wedding shit would just stop happening in the office. 

Toby's nodding. "The question is," he asks, "where do you want this to go from here?" 

"I hadn't really thought of that part," Jim admits. He's not used to thinking about how things work in official channels. "Well, uh, what do you usually do?" 

Toby gives him a weary look. "Usually, I tell Dwight that I'll put it in your file and it'll be addressed at the end of the month." 

"Right, right." Jim drums his fingers on the corner of Toby's desk. "I meant more like in those situations where it's not really the other person's fault that everyone else is reacting to something badly, and they shouldn't really get in trouble for it, or be embarrassed, or think anyone's mad at them. Like, is there something you can do where a new rule goes out that would cover everyone, so no fingers get pointed, or, um, some subtle suggestions so it's not like an official H.R. thing, or..."

Toby puts his pen down with great care and breathes out heavily, the way you do in the shower when you want to make sure there's no water in your nose. "Jim," he says in a careful voice, "I can't promise you that Pam won't get upset about this. I can't convince her it's her own idea. The best I can do is to talk to her privately and ask her to try to keep these distractions to a minimum."

"Yeah." Jim closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to think of a way around this. All he can see is that look that Pam gets when her happiness takes a blow, the shock of betrayal going through her face like an earthquake, making everything crumble behind that desperately brave smile. He doesn't think he can take it. "Look, just-- fuck it. This isn't that big a deal. I shouldn't have-- I don't know. Fuck it." He waves a hand dismissively at the notepad, creased with the careful scrawl of Toby's handwriting. "You can just put that through the shredder or something." 

"Well, uh, it doesn't quite work like that." Toby's face twists wryly. "Technically, I don't get to decide what complaints get saved and which don't, so I can't just get rid of it."

"Oh, Jesus." Jim drops his head backward and stares at the ceiling, looking for hope in the dusty ceiling tiles. "I was just _venting_."

"Right," Toby agrees quickly, "I know. Look, don't worry-- I can just redact it. It'll still be on file, but it won't move up the ladder and your name will come off of it." Toby leans forward a bit and pitches his voice lower, that sad look of reassurance on his face. "She won't ever hear about it. Okay?" 

"Yeah. Okay." Jim scrubs a hand over his face, pulling at the bridge of his nose on the way down. He knows he should feel relieved, but really he just feels like the world's biggest pussy. 

"Do you want to talk about it?" Toby asks. 

Jim presses his lips together and shakes his head. "Gotta tell ya, I really, really don't." 

"Fair enough." Toby picks up a sharpie and puts thick black marks over the places he's written Jim's name. 

Jim watches him, trying not to breathe in the alcohol-licorice smell of the Sharpie. "Can I ask you something?" 

"Sure." 

"Why Amsterdam?" 

Toby caps the Sharpie, rips the paper off the pad and puts it in a file. "I don't know," he says, letting each word out in a slow parade, like he has to think of them one at a time instead of as a phrase. "Mostly, I guess, I just... wanted to be on the other side of the world. From, you know, everything." 

Jim doesn't push for clarification on 'everything'. "Did it help?" he asks, instead. 

Toby takes a while to answer. Finally he sighs. "Not... not as much as I hoped." He shrugs and looks up at Jim with weary eyes. "It still beat the alternative. Better to get away from it, you know?" 

"Yeah. Right, right." 

When he gets back to his desk, Phyllis is over at reception, cooing over a picture of Pam's wedding dress. She drops her voice when she sees Jim, and gives him that look again. 

The other side of the world is starting to sound really, really good. 

* * * *  
* * * * 

Nobody else is at the office at seven-thirty in the morning, except Dwight, who starts skulking around putting plastic plugs in all the electrical sockets and installing child locks on the cabinets shortly after Pam arrives, thus keeping himself out of her way. They're running low on office supplies again, so Pam uses pink, blue, and yellow highlighters to color the welcome sign for Take Your Daughter To Work Day, layering and blending the colors carefully to make it sort of blueish-lavendery-pinkish. It actually sucks less than she expects. The paper ends up soggy and wrinkly in spots from the excess of ink, so instead of hanging the sign on the front of her desk, as per her original plan, she decides to hang it from the ceiling-- not only will it dry out faster, being near the air vents and all, but it'll be too high for little kids to notice the shoddy workmanship. Totally a win-win situation.

The one problem: finding a way to hang the thing. Pam still has fishing line in the bottom drawer of her desk from the Christmas before last, so she kicks off her shoes and clambers up on top of her desk, fishing line in hand, to try to loop it over one of those metal ceiling tile supports. Unfortunately, she's too short to reach the ceiling, even on tip-toe, so she stops to access the situation. After a quick check to make sure that Dwight is still nowhere to be seen, she leans down and uses the tips of her fingers to fish around in the top drawer, wobbling a little on the balls of her feet. She can feel air on parts of her legs that don't see sunlight from Halloween to Memorial Day, and there are stripes of tightness around her chest where her shirt is bunching up, taut at the buttons and gaping apart at the neck. She's all ill-balanced and exposed, and it makes her clumsy, pawing out two plastic rulers and a big paper clip like she's never used her hands before.

Which, of course, is when Jim walks in. He nods at her without breaking his stride. "Morning," he says, completely deadpan.

"Morning." Pam straightens up as fast as she can, flushed and embarrassed, and smooths down her skirt. She half-expects him to offer help, but Jim just slings his jacket and bag over the back of his chair and sits down at his desk, studiously ignoring her. There's no anger on his face, no guilt, no misery; he just looks kind of blank, empty. She knows that look; she felt it on her face last week, when she found out about his Australia trip. 

It feels like everything's ending, their whole crazy, messy friendship and everything that had gone with it, and all that will be left from this point on is a strained shell of what they've been. No closeness, no secrets, just quips about Dwight and Michael and an old tension, deep down, the memory of their bodies moving together. Like they're the only two survivors of a great disaster, and there will always be this thing between them that nobody else would understand, but it's in the past. Over.

Which is... fine. Whatever. She wills her eyes away from him and gets back to work.

Pam ties the paper clip to the end of the fishing line and holds the rulers over her head in one hand, using them to push two ceiling tiles up simultaneously. She grips the spool in her teeth and uses her free hand to toss the paper clip, trying to hit that sweet spot that will loop it over the metal support. Toss: miss. She feels her way down the fishing line from the spool in her mouth until she hits the cool metal of the paper clip, and tries again. Toss: miss. 

The room is silent, except for the humming of her monitor, the occasional click of Jim's mouse, the soft _pip!_ sound each time the paper clip glances off the ceiling tile, and the clatter when it falls onto the desk.

Toss: miss. The heater kicks on, sending out a whoosh of lukewarm air that teases a strand of hair out of Pam's barrette and into her eyes. She swipes it away with her wrist, feeling more ridiculous with every passing moment. 

Jim's chair squeaks gently, a melody that's so familiar to her that she doesn't even have to look over to know that he's leaning back, touching a hand to the back of his head and watching her; she can't picture the look on his face, though, and she doesn't want to look and risk being wrong. "Okay," he says, "I have to ask. What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" she asks. She gives the paper clip another toss and misses again. 

There's a long silence. "I gotta tell you," he says at long last, "I have absolutely no idea." 

"I--" (toss: miss) "--am trying--" (toss: miss) "--to hang up--" (toss: miss) "-- this stupid, goddamn, _fucking_ sign." She throws the rulers down on the desk in frustration and pushes her palms against her temples. "Dammit," she mutters. She won't cry, she _won't_. 

After a moment, she hears Jim sigh quietly, and then his chair squeaks in another familiar tune, accompanied by the plastic percussion that means he's standing up. When she looks up, he's standing next to her desk. It's strange, looking at him from this angle, being able to see the top of his head; all the lines are changed. "Are you okay?" he asks.

"No." She swipes angrily at a tear that has leaked out against her will. "No, I'm just... I don't think... I can't..." She makes a frustrated noise and shakes her head weakly without meeting his eyes. "This really, really sucks."

"Yeah," he agrees softly. "I know."

She looks at him sharply, searching his face, feeling a desperate wave of hope like she's been standing in front of a collapsed house and, against all odds, has just heard a surviving voice calling from underneath the rubble. "You do?"

Jim smiles a little. It's his quiet smile, the only one he has that doesn't look like he means to do it at all. "Yeah," he says. "It's been... kind of a rough week." 

"Right, yeah, I know-- I'm just, it's early, I'm frustrated, I really _suck_ at throwing paper clips, and..." She sighs, letting her tone be a little over-dramatic, like all of this had only been about paper clips and nothing else. "And, unfortunately, it turns out that I'm, uh... short." 

"Yeah, I should have warned you about that," Jim says, that jokey lilt back in his voice. "I mean, it felt sort of cruel not to tell you about your height problem before, but, well, I thought it would be better if you found out for yourself." 

"Oh, gee, thanks." She's smiling for real now. It's not everything, she knows that, but after weeks of him pulling away, this finally feels like a step back. "Very considerate of you."

"I'm a considerate guy."

He's right there, looking up at her, and it occurs to her that his head is right at a perfect height for her to put her hand on it, so she goes ahead and reaches out, patting him like a puppy. "Look who's got the height problem now," she teases. 

"Yeah, well, don't let it go to your head, Beesly." 

"Your _mom's_ head," she says inanely, scratching at his scalp in a friendly manner. His hair feels very soft. 

Jim rolls his eyes and grins up at her. "Anyway, if you'd like some help with the sign from a professional tall person..." He holds up his hand, offering it to her. 

"Yes, please. Lots to do before the kiddies show up." She takes his hand and scrambles down from the desk, bumping her knee on the edge and barely feeling it. "Speaking of which, you'll never guess what Dwight's doing..." 

* * * * 

Jim knows from past experience that Sasha is on her own planet half the time. He hasn't dealt with a lot of other little kids, so he's not sure if that's a typical thing for her age or if it's just Sasha being Sasha, but either way it doesn't surprise him when she ends up camping underneath his desk. She's got a pair of scissors and a plastic spoon, and she's using them to enact a long, rambling story that seems to be about the scissors wanting to go to a dance and the spoon wanting to stay home. Once she has the spoon sit on Jim's foot, like it's a sofa, and he keeps perfectly still until the scissors convinces the spoon to "get up and go party". Occasionally, she sings what sound like Avril Lavigne songs in a breathy little voice. It's really pretty cute. 

Every time Sasha starts singing, Dwight's head snaps up and rotates around like he's scanning for an enemy signal. Then he shakes it off and goes back to his work, clearly thinking that he's imagining things. Jim watches out of the corner of his eye, getting the rhythm of Dwight's reaction: blink, twitch, pursed lips, then his head jerking up. 

The fifth time, after Dwight twitches but before he purses his lips, Jim looks up and pretends to watch something go past Dwight, then double back again, then up and over and around. "Huh," he says. 

Dwight is already staring at him. "What?" 

"Hmm? No, nothing." Jim goes back to looking at his spreadsheet. 

It only takes two repetitions before Dwight starts waving his hands around his head to fend off an imaginary insect every time Sasha sings. Jim glances at Pam, a habit he hasn't indulged in over a week, and she has her lips clamped together over a secret grin, her eyes shining at him. 

He doesn't look away. He should, but he doesn't, and he can feel something falling as he realizes, again, that he's totally doomed.

It takes him almost five minutes to decipher the phone number scrawled on the back of a drink coupon tucked in his wallet-- Jenny (or Janine-- something with a J) had been a little worse for wear from alcohol when she'd written it. She's at home, which is something of a surprise in the middle of the day, and strangely happy to hear from him, and more than willing to meet at a bar down the street immediately after he gets off work. All those things put together scream _unemployed_ , _desperate_ and possibly _alcoholic_ , but, hey, he's the guy hunched over his cell phone in a stairwell, calling a girl whose name he doesn't know in a last-ditch bid to distract himself from his engaged best friend, so he really can't talk.


	2. Chapter 2

Some people bring over cassaroles in times of crisis; Pam draws. She thought about drawing Kevin as a rotund knight slaying a skin-cancer dragon, but she got stuck trying to figure out how to envision skin cancer as a dragon, so that went in the trash. Once, way back, Kevin had said that he thought snow globes were funny, so Pam draws a little picture for him of the Accounting department in a snow globe, using a fresh Sharpie. Angela and Kevin are easy to caricature-- all straight lines and angles for Angela, all circles and curves for Kevin-- but Oscar doesn't have any easily simplified features, so his Sharpie-sketch turns out looking like a short, irritable Barak Obama. She picks it up by the corners and holds it up for the camera, and Jim comes over to the reception desk so he can take a look. 

It's his third trip up to her desk today, which means that they're almost back to their pre-unpleasantness average (not counting lunch or breaks or any incidental meetings). Not that she's counting. It's nice to have him back; it's nice to have her friend again. It's like-- she barely dares to think this, but still-- it's like they've resolved the sex thing that had been lurking under their friendship from the very beginning. Maybe this is it; maybe they've gotten it out of their systems, and everything's going to be better from here on out. It's more than the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel-- it's like the tunnel hadn't just been dark, but full of water, and Pam's been swimming without a breath for forever, and now she's suddenly broken through into an unexpected pocket of air that's saved her from drowning. 

Jim leans over the counter to get a better look at the picture. "Needs snow," he says, chewing thoughtfully on one of Michael's birthday doughnuts.

She holds up the Sharpie and shrugs. "Got anything more snow-colored?"

Jim purses his lips in concentration, then nods and taps on the desktop counter. "Gimme," he orders, and when Pam obediently slides the picture over, he brushes the powdered sugar off his doughnut, letting it fall onto the picture. "There you go. _Accountants Under Glass_ , Pamela Beesly, 2006. Sharpie Fine Point Marker and confectioner's sugar on recycled copier paper; 8 1/2 by 11 inches. Suitable for framing but not for human consumption." He loops a grin at her.

She bursts out laughing and takes the picture back, careful not to smear the sugar. "It's a lucky thing you didn't pick a jelly doughnut."

"Oh, Pam," he tuts. "Luck has nothing to do with it. This is _art_." 

"This is _breakfast_ ," she counters, "and you got it all over my desk."

Jim looks down. "Oops." He brushes ineffectually at the white flecks of sugar. It gets stuck to his fingers, and he makes a motion like he's going to wipe it off on his pants, but stops just in time and makes a face. "Oh, well," he says, and before Pam has time to register what's happening, he has his hand up by his mouth and is licking the sugar off with small flicks of his tongue, like a fussy cat. 

She stares, a sense memory washing through her of that tongue on her mouth, under her jaw, working his way down her stomach. 

"What?" he asks, pausing with one finger right by his open mouth.

Pam shakes her head wordlessly, but the thoughts must be plain as day on her face because Jim's eyes darken and she can see his adam's apple bob as he swallows. Her heart is beating, beating, but she can't remember the last time she took a breath. "Um," she manages at last, "I've got napkins, if you want..."

"Sure," he says, his eyes not leaving hers. Their fingers brush when she hands him the napkin, which makes them both jump a little, like a spark of static electricity. It looks like he's about so say something else, but then Dwight comes marching up with a clipboard, snapping at her about the exact freezer temperature for maintaining the proper firmness of an ice cream cake, and Jim just gives her a look she can't quite translate and goes back to his desk. 

She excuses herself to go to the bathroom and sits in one of the stalls for what feels like forever, reminding herself that this was just a memory. They'll have those, now; there's no way to have a sexual relationship with someone and not occasionally remember what it was like. This is normal.

She presses her flushed face against the cool tile wall and wonders if it's also normal to feel so much like she's lying to herself.

* * * * 

Jim has his hand so far back on the Rite-Aid shelf that he can feel the edge digging into his armpit, and he's already trying to think of ways that sixty- _eight_ packages of Cup o' Noodles would not be anticlimactic when his fingers finally brush against what must be the last one in the store. "Aha!" he exclaims, and hauls it out in triumph. "Sixty- _nine_."

"Oh, thank God." Pam lets out her breath in a whoosh, like she'd been holding it. "Are there any left in there, or do you think we've cleaned them out?"

Jim hunkers down so that the shelf is on eye-level. "I think that's it," he says. "Wow. Is that cutting it close, or what?"

"Must be fate," Pam agrees. She tucks her arms around herself and smiles, and he smiles back, and they just stand there for a minute smiling over a cart full of an absurd number of cup o' noodles. 

"What else?" he asks, and starts pushing the cart again, leaning over to steer with his forearms, which coincidentally puts his head right around the same height as Pam's. The camera guy has wandered off, probably bored out of his mind by the cups o' noodles counting; maybe he's outside getting some establishing shots. It leaves them alone for a heady moment, free of any interference. "Cupcakes? Candy? Pornography?"

"Well, porn, obviously," Pam says, "but we'll have to get that somewhere else. In the meantime, I think... M&Ms. Lots of them."

He looks at her, and can't help smiling. "Oh, yeah, good point-- we need more than he can fit in his mouth at one time, so..."

"A party-pack it is, then." She stops suddenly. "Wait, weren't they in the last aisle?"

"No idea." Jim stands straight up and starts to turn the cart around. It moves ponderously, squeaking; one of the wheels feels like it isn't turning. He tugs on it and makes a tortured face.

"Just leave it there," Pam says. 

"But--" Jim looks at the cart, blocking most of the narrow aisle, and that's when her small, cool hand slips into his and tugs gently.

"Come _on_ ," she tells him, grinning up at him with a warmth in her eyes that makes his breath catch. He lets her lead him away, her hand still tucked into his, tugging at him like he's a recalcitrant puppy. She keeps peeking back over her shoulder for long seconds with one side of her mouth still curled up in that lopsided grin, looking just plain _happy_ , and it's been so long since he's seen her look like that, he'd do anything to keep that smile on her face. He doesn't understand what they're doing, or what she's thinking, or why he can't do a damn thing to resist her. He just knows that he'd follow her anywhere.

Pam's fingers start to loosen when they get near all the big bags of candy, but he hangs on, not ready to let go just yet. She looks up at him quickly, eyebrows raised in joking protest, and Jim squeezes her hand in a friendly manner. She squeezes back, swinging their entwined hands between them like they're warming up a jump-rope, and she's smiling, and he just can't help it-- he cups her hand in both of his, lifting it up and holding it just under his chin, bowing his head. He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing in the fresh melon scent of her hand lotion, before he presses his lips to her knuckles, once, very softly, and once again.

"Jim." Her voice is low, and it sounds like a warning. He opens his eyes and finds her staring right at him, a panicky, stricken expression on her face. "Don't," she says, but her voice falters on the word, and she blushes and looks down as she pulls her hand away.

This is the point where he knows he should apologize, should stop and back up. They've been on this road before, and it'll just end up going over a cliff again-- only this time, there won't be any chance of survival. If he just lets this go, if he keeps things simple, if he doesn't give in to this self-destructive impulse, then maybe he can move on and they can stay friends after June tenth. If not--

It's a choice. He can't pretend it's not. He won't be able to pretend, later, that he didn't know better, or couldn't stop himself. It's a choice.

There's a crash at the far end of the aisle, and they both jump; Pam lets out a little shriek. Two carts are nose-to-nose with each other, one manned by an angry old lady with a Bronx accent and a lot to say, and the other by an old guy barely taller than his cart who appears to still be pushing, stubbornly trying to shove the noisy lady from the Bronx out of his way. The camera guy walks into view, clearly focusing on the excitement.

Jim looks back at Pam, alarmed. "Did he--"

"No, I think we're okay." She holds his gaze for a moment, her eyes solemn and a little sad, but that soft warmth starts creeping in again. "Just-- later, all right?"

"Yeah," he agrees, and leans over to get the M&Ms. "Later."

* * * *

The last time Pam went skating was also at a birthday party, but in that case it'd been for her friend Lindsay Brauner, who'd been turning twelve. All Pam can really remember about it is scooting around the perimeter, clinging to the wall, while everyone else sailed past like they'd been born skating. Since that's not really a fond memory, it's really amazing that Jim could coax her out on the ice at all today. Which was-- well. Nice. Really nice.

The thing is, she'd forgotten how sore skating makes her ankles, so she really doesn't stay out on the ice all that long. She sits on one of the long benches at rinkside and fumbles off her gloves to unlace her skates, halfway watching in her peripheral vision as everyone glides around the rink in elliptical courses, like comets in mittens and scarves.

One of the comets lets its orbit decay, slowing to a stop by the wall just in front of her. She knows even before she looks up that it's Jim. "Hey," he says, pushing the door open. "What happened to the next Oksana Baiul?"

"Feet hurt," she explains. "They're not used to the whole skating thing." She gets the last loop of the lace unhooked and peels the long tongue down; when she gets her foot out of the ten-ton skate, it feels practically weightless by comparison. "Ohhhh, that's better," she sighs, and gets to work on the other one. 

Jim clambers off the ice and sits next to her, balancing his feet on the back ends of his skate blades. "You were really getting the hang of the whole skating thing near the end, there."

She snorts. "Yeah, well. Yay for not falling on my butt!"

"No, I'm serious. You did good." He wags his skates from side to side in ponderous arcs and then lets them both flop inwards, the tips of the blades clashing together heavily. "I never thought I'd say this, but I've actually enjoyed Michael's birthday this year."

"Me too," Pam agrees. "I mean, well, since Kevin doesn't have cancer. Otherwise I would have had to downgrade my rating." She pries her other foot out of the skate with only three-quarters of the laces undone, unable to wait any longer, and heaves a sigh of relief. "I think my skates are a little too small."

"Nah, they all feel like that." Jim looks down, watches her toes wiggling inside her socks. "Anyway, I think Kelly said something about you guys going off to get some kind of fancy pedicures tomorrow, so I guess you'll have a chance to get any damage repaired."

Pam claps a hand to her forehead. "Oh, God, I forgot all about that."

"Really? I thought you would've been looking forward to it." He lifts his eyebrows solemnly. "Not every woman gets the chance to have a whole day-- a _whole day_ , mind you-- in the company of Kelly Kapoor."

"Hey, it's still better than my original plans for the weekend."

"Which were...?"

"Watching the _Changing Spaces_ marathon and tying bows on a couple hundred little bags of birdseed."

"Oh, I don't know," Jim says. "On the one hand, quality cable programming; on the other--"

"No, she's okay, I mean, it's just--" She stops and presses her cold feet together at the ankle, bites her lip; she starts twice, trying to work up to forming the words, and finally just blurts out, "Roy's out of town this weekend."

Jim goes very still. His eyes flick over to her and his mouth opens slightly like he's having trouble breathing. "Oh," he says, and leans forward, elbows on knees. He stares into space, nodding softly, taps his fingers together a few times, and says, "Oh," again, very quietly.

"Yeah, so..." Pam laughs weakly. She's kind of having trouble breathing, herself. "Um, he dropped me off at work this morning and took the truck, so. Kind of why I've been using you as my personal chauffeur all day." 

There's a long moment of silence, punctuated by the slicing sounds of people skating by. Pam can hear Meredith guffawing and Kevin's droning voice, somewhere on the other side of the rink, far away. She breathes carefully, slow and shallow, trying to slow her heart and keep it from battering its way through her ribs. 

Finally, Jim makes a soft sound, almost like a chuckle, and turns to look at her, a smile slowly curving his mouth. "I have to ask, Beesley," he asks, "is this your way of asking for a ride home?"

"What?" she exclaims. "N-- well, not exactly, but if you're offering--"

"Me? Oh, no." Jim waves a hand languidly. "But I'm sure Dwight would be _more_ than happy to--"

"You are such a jerk," she laughs, and bumps her shoulder against him. When she puts her hand down, after, it ends up right next to his, barely touching. 

They stay that way, not really looking at each other, until Michael comes to a dramatic hockey-league halt in front of them and hollers, "Come on, come on, it's time for presents! For Kevin!"

* * * *

The problem with having Pam in his car is that Jim is conditioned, now, to associate having her in his car with sex. Well, hand-jobs, blow-jobs, whatever; the point is that the lizard part of his brain has done the math and come up with _Pam + car = orgasm_ , so giving Pam a ride home puts Jim in the position of trying to keep from getting an erection, every single moment, and still manage to drive. It's not easy, but he's trying his best, because even if this feels like it's going the way he thinks it's going, he's not sure if it's _really_ going to go that way, and even if it does, he's not sure if he _wants_ it to, and so frankly this is complicated enough without showing all his cards by getting a boner.

He's not getting any answers from Pam, that's for sure. She's been quiet the whole time, looking out the window, her hands locked together in her lap. Whatever's going on in her brain, it's not showing on her face.

For the sake of his own mental health, he runs through the options for dinner. Currently the groceries are at low ebb, since he usually does his shopping on the weekends, but he thinks he might have a box of mac 'n' cheese left, and possibly hot dogs. Hot dogs and mac 'n' cheese, together, are possibly the greatest culinary invention to come out of the twentieth century, so... not a bad plan, really.

"Left here," Pam says softly.

"Yeah, I know." He bites his tongue before he adds _I've been here before, remember?_ , and turns left onto Pam's street. She doesn't prompt him about which house it is, so apparently the message got through without saying it out loud. He parks in front of the house and, against his better judgement, goes ahead and turns the car completely off. For a long, tense moment the only sound is the ticking noise of the motor cooling down.

"So," Pam says, staring down at her hands.

"So," he echoes. 

She looks out the window, at the dark house. "Um... can I ask you a favor?"

"Sure," he says, trying to keep his tone light, trying to distract her from whatever is looming behind her eyes. "As long as it doesn't have anything to do with breaking into the Gotham Museum of Natural History to steal dinosaur bones for reanimation, because I promised Batman I wouldn't do that anymore."

Pam laughs a little. "Well, maybe I'll talk you into it next time."

"And make me go back on my word?" He sighs dramatically. "Oh, Pam. Will you never let me escape this life of crime?"

"It's terrible, I know," she says. "Seriously, though, could you come inside? Just for a minute?" 

Jim's heart jumps. It's insanely difficult to avoid making assumptions about where this is going, but he's doing his best. "Need some help checking your coat closet for ax murderers?"

"Oh, yeah," she laughs, looking down at her lap. "You know how it is in Scranton these days; if it's not bears, it's pirates, if it's not pirates..."

"...It's ax murderers," he finishes, and smiles in spite of himself. "Yeah, okay. I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if I let you go in by yourself and you ended up getting ambushed by robot ninjas or something."

Pam opens her door and climbs out. "You're the last of the true gentlemen, Mr. Halpert," she says over her shoulder.

Jim can't help looking at the driveway as they walk to the door. He tells himself that it won't matter if Roy is actually home; all Jim's going to do is wave a baseball bat at a few shifty-looking closets, so if there's a pickup truck in that driveway he'll just get to go home to his gourmet meal of Kraft and Hormel products that much sooner. He looks at the driveway anyway. It's empty.

Pam stops after she's unlocked the door and looks up at him impishly; he lifts his fists, assumes his best battle-ready expression, and nods. She nods back and throws the door open. No robot ninjas are in evidence.

"Well," Pam says. "So far, so good." She reaches around the edge of the doorway, fishing for the light switch.

"Careful." Jim keeps his fists up, craning his neck to peer inside. "Those ax murderers can be tricky bastards."

"Bears," she corrects him, leading the way through the door. "Or pirates."

"Those, too," he agrees, and closes the door behind them.

Pam puts her coat and purse on the couch as she walks past it. "Hello?" she calls. "Any ax murderers, bears, pirates, or ninjas--"

" _Robot_ ninjas."

"--or _robot_ ninjas, this is your last chance! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

They pause, and listen. Nothing. 

"I think we're okay," Pam says, and turns around with a bright grin.

Oh, that smile. Jim feels a hollow ache settle into his chest just from looking at her. He swallows. "I don't know," he says at last. "I mean, it seems like we are, I just don't want to be wrong."

Her head tips a little to one side as she gives him a careful look. "We are," she assures him. "Everything turned out fine. Right?"

It's rapidly becoming apparent that they're not talking about imaginary intruders anymore, and it makes Jim's stomach twist sickly. They've never discussed things before, not ever, and he doesn't really want to start now, but they're kind of in the middle of it already so it's a little late to back out. "Right," he agrees. "And we're okay."

"Right." She nods a few times more than is necessary. "I like things being okay."

"Me, too."

"It's nice. It's nice, and it's fun, and it's... okay." Pam flicks a quick look at him, and says, very softly, "I don't want to have things not be okay again. You know?"

"I know." Jim feels his stomach twist again. _Mac 'n' cheese_ , he reminds himself. _Hot dogs_. He has dinner to look forward to; this is not, not, not a letdown. "Better to just have things... _stay_ okay."

"As long as it _is_ okay," she says softly. "But what if it's not? What if what we think is okay now turns out not to be okay later? What if okay is--" She breaks off abruptly and presses her hands to her head. "Oh God, the more I say that word the less it sounds like it's even _English_."

He tries to laugh, but nothing comes out. He's still back at the _what if_. "If?" he manages. "What--?"

Pam makes a strange sound, frustrated and sad and sweet all at the same time, and gives him a look to match. "Jim," she says, her voice catching, "I--"

And then she's kissing him.

In a way, part of him has been waiting for this all day, sensing it in the air like a storm coming-- not so much knowing it would happen as knowing that the right conditions existed. Jim is still caught completely off-guard. He'd given up on ever being able to touch her again; every morning for weeks he's been waking up almost happy before he catches himself and remembers that this weird thing of theirs is over. He knows he shouldn't, he knows that he'll regret this sooner rather than later, but he feels like he does those first waking moments, before the reality check, and it's too much to give up.

He wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her whole body against his and off the ground a little-- she must be up on the tips of her toes-- and just kisses her, kisses her, kisses her. She's got her hands fisted in his hair and is pulling him closer, making these delicious little noises in the back of her throat, and he groans into her mouth in response. 

Pam shifts her balance and her foot comes down right on his pinkie toe; he yelps. "Sorry," she murmurs against his jaw.

"Mm," he says, dismissing it, and works a hand down to cup her ass and pull her up higher. He can feel her mouth, pressed against his neck, twist into a smile, and she starts shaking slightly. It takes a second to work out that somehow, Pam's got the giggles. "Something funny?" he asks.

"Robot ninjas," she tells him, and laughs outright, a big open-mouthed delighted laugh that makes his heart flip over pleasantly. "I had no idea what a menace they were."

"Well," he admits, "the alternative was something like 'why, Miss Beesly, are you planning on taking advantage of me?' but I was afraid it might dissuade you."

"Probably," she agrees, and pulls his mouth down to hers again. Jim pushes her up against a wall, because experience has taught him that when making out with someone more than a whole head shorter than he is, the only two ways to avoid neck strain are to either lie down or involve a sturdy wall. Pam makes a sort of _hrmph!_ noise and pulls back. "Hold on, now," she informs him, "the wall thing was not so great last time." She's smiling, though, and doesn't seem mad.

"Among other things," he agrees, kissing her neck. "Don't worry. Not the plan this time."

"There's a plan?" she asks breathlessly, and hooks one of her legs around his, the better to grind her hips against his. The erection he'd been fighting all night is back with a vengeance, and his new problem is trying to avoid coming in his pants like he was fourteen all over again. 

He's grasping desperately for a bare minimum of coherence, and the way she's moving against him is not making that easy. "Kind of a plan," he gasps. "More like a concept. Thinking of seeing if we're any good at this if we go slow."

"Guess we'll find out," Pam moans, almost directly into his ear, from where she's nipping at his jaw. "We've got time."

The thought flashes through his mind that they're alone, that Roy isn't coming back tonight, that they have all night-- and oh, God, he almost loses his fucking mind thinking about it. Hours of touching, no rush, no interruptions, just her, with him. _All night_.

"New plan," he says, and lets her slide down to a standing position again. "Less wall, more b-- more lying down." He hopes that he made it over that little fumble without Pam catching it, but she stiffens in his arms and he knows she caught the half-spoken _bed_. For anyone else in the midst of foreplay, a normal word: for a guy standing in the house where his occasional lover lives with her fiancé, not so much. Shit.

When Jim looks at her, Pam is chewing on her lower lip, staring fixedly at his chin. He steps back a little, so he's not so much holding her as gently grasping her elbows, and watches as a stormy, impenetrable thought process rages across her face. Finally she looks down and slides one of her hands down his arm until she's holding his hand.

Silently, she leads him through the kitchen and into the unfamiliar territory of the hallway. They pass a bathroom with aqua-blue tile, a door that appears to be a linen closet, and then they're in the bedroom. Pam flips on the light, drops his hand, and gives him a look like she's challenging him to say something.

The place is a mess. Not just the stuff jumbled around on the dresser, the unmade bed, and the pile of clothes near the laundry hamper-- that, he's used to, that's normal life as far as he's concerned. The part that really strikes him is the quiet hand of design peeking out from underneath the debris: the selection of the furniture (Target cheap, but all matching, with nice lines), the soft colors of the sheets and the quilt, the framed watercolors, the way the walls have been painted not just with the sky-blue base color, but with a layer of misty white fading in mid-way to the ceiling, slowly eclipsing the blue. So much care has been taken with the creation of this room that the careless way it's being treated seems not just callous, but mean.

Jim reaches out and touches the frame of one of the watercolors. "I like it. Yours?" he asks. 

She nods, still silent, watching him like she's waiting for something specific. He looks at her, trying to puzzle out what she's after, but the shutters are down and it's tough to read her. Is she waiting for him to admit what a big step this is? Does she expect him to say something stupid about Roy? Does she want him to reassure her that he's not expecting anything to change with the wedding and all?

He takes a deep breath and plunges in. "So, Mickey Mouse is in the middle of a nasty divorce with Minnie Mouse," he says. "Mickey's arguing with the judge, and the judge says, 'Look, I'm sorry, Mickey, but you can't just divorce Minnie because you think she's a little crazy.' And Mickey says, 'Your Honor, I never said she was a little crazy, I said she was fucking Goofy!"

Pam just stares at him like he's insane, and she shakes her head back and forth three or four times before the corners of her mouth turn up and she's laughing helplessly. "Okay... um-- is one of us supposed to be Goofy in this scenario?"

"Yes," Jim says solemnly. "Me."

"I can totally see that," she laughs, and goes up on tip-toe to give him a single soft kiss. "C'mere, Goofy," she orders, and starts unbuttoning his shirt.

* * * *

If Pam thinks about this too hard, the guilt is going to crush her. She'd kissed Roy good-morning in this room, on this bed, less than twelve hours ago. He had cupped a hand around the back of her head and breathed his morning breath on her face when their lips parted, and then he'd grinned and tweaked her breast gently. She's trying not to think of that right now, with Jim in their bed, because the two scenes start to overlap in her head and she finds herself comparing them, putting the two men in the same role and... and...

It's one thing to compare Roy and Jim before, when one meant a future and the other meant a quick fuck here and there, but this is different. Dangerous. She's not sure if she's ever going to be able to draw sharp lines around their roles again, and, worse, she's not sure if she wants to. She wants Jim in her bed, with all that entails, even if-- God help her-- that means that he's taking Roy's place. 

It's hilarious that for all the sex and all the emotional drama, she's only seen Jim naked twice before, both times under harsh lighting conditions. She's never seen him naked with the lights off, hovering over her like this, barely visible, outlined in soft charcoal shades and highlighted with faint yellow tones from the streetlight down the block. 

"Touch me," she tells him. Obediently, he runs a hand down her side, over her hip, back up and over her stomach. It tickles, and she rolls sideways, swatting his hand away. "Hey, that's not what I meant."

"You didn't specify," Jim says, kissing a slow path down the slope of one breast.

"You knew what I meant." She doesn't say, _You always know_.

He teases her nipple with his tongue, brushing his hand down her side again. "I figured that the rule was, if you didn't specify, I got to choose."

Pam reaches for his hand and presses it against her thigh. "Please." 

"In due time," he promises, and kisses his way across to her other nipple. His hand stays on her thigh, excruciatingly close to where she wants it, his fingers moving in languid patterns and making stray sparks shoot up her spine. Once, the back of his hand brushes against her and her hips buck involuntarily.

" _Please_ ," she says, more forcefully.

"Here?" he asks in a too-knowing voice, and traces a single finger lightly over her, just barely stirring the hair. 

She presses her head back into the pillow. "Oh, God, you _tease_."

"Shh." His hand moves up again, more pressure this time, but still nowhere near what she needs. He dips a finger into her, slow and shallow. "We've got time," he whispers, and moves that finger lightly around her clit.

"You're going to kill me," Pam grumbles, and moves her hand down his stomach, feeling blindly for his cock, determined to make him get on with the program. 

"Hey, now." Jim moves his hips away from her. He kisses her neck, down low by her collarbone, tickling her nose with his hair; she purses her lips and blows the hair away, trying not to sneeze. "Patience, young padawan."

"Don't get dorky on me," she says. "I'm not-- _oh_ \--" She cuts herself off with a gasp as Jim slides his finger inside her a little further and brushes her clit with his thumb at the same time.

"Like I said," he murmurs, biting lightly at her shoulder, "I want to see if we're good at this when we take it slow." Two fingers now, gliding in and out with insanely slow strokes, pausing at the top of each stroke to circle her clit.

"We're good, we're good," she babbles, pulling at his shoulders, digging her heels into the bed and pushing up. "Please, Jim, come _on_ \--" 

His fingers slip deep into her and he groans, pressing his face into her neck. "Oh, God, you're so-- oh, _Pam_ \--"

" _Please_."

Jim shifts his weight, moving over her, the bed squeaking a too-familiar tune. "Shit, where's the--"

She leans over, half-trapped by the way her legs are tangled with his, and fumbles at the nightstand for a condom. "I got it." She's careful to toss the wrapper back behind the bed, where Roy always does in spite of all the times she's nagged at him just to throw it in the fucking trash can. It's too dark to see exactly what she's doing, so she has to grope around a little to find Jim's cock. The condom rolls on with a cold, slick sound, and Jim gasps. She spreads her legs wider and presses him against her.

"Slow," he rasps, pushing inside, and Pam's not sure if he's telling her or himself. 

"Come on," she begs, rocking against him. He starts to move, achingly slow and shallow, his fingers barely rubbing against her clit. "Oh, God, more--"

Another inch of him, maybe, slides into her. She can feel his shoulders and arms trembling with effort, but he still keeps moving at that exquisitely slow pace. Another inch, and another, and suddenly he's all the way inside her. Pam locks her heels around his thighs, pushes up hard, and comes, not bothering to keep quiet.

"Oh, God," he pants, and starts thrusting in earnest, his whole body trembling. "Oh, Jesus-- Pam--"

She pulls him closer, pressing her palms into the small of his back, and he tenses against her, groaning as he comes.

* * * * 

"Okay, okay, I've got one," Pam mumbles sleepily into his neck. Jim shifts his weight, trying to get her cheekbone to press into a less uncomfortable spot. "Okay. So an elderly doctor and a Baptist minister are sitting next to each other on a plane that gets delayed on the runway for two or three hours--"

"Completely plausible," Jim says, rubbing his chin against her hair.

She slaps his chest gently and leaves her hand there. "Hush. So after they take off, the pilot gets on the intercom, apologizes, blah blah blah sorry for the delay you'll all be getting a free round of drinks."

" _Awesome_ flight."

Pam gives him an adorable little warning growl. "So, okay, the stewardess comes around to serve their drinks, and the doctor gets a gin and tonic. The stewardess asks the minister if he wants anything, and he says, 'Oh, no, I would rather commit adultery than drink alcohol.' And the doctor immediately hands his drink back to the stewardess and says, 'Madam, I did not know there was a choice.'" She presses her face against him and snuffles giggles into his chest.

Jim rolls his eyes and runs a hand down her spine. "You are _such_ a dork."

"Oh, wait, I should tell you the one about the panda and the prostitute." She yawns. "Or maybe it's a koala bear, I don't remember."

"Fantastic. Hold that thought; I have to go pee." He pushes at her shoulder and she rolls off of him, ending up face-down on the other side of the bed. "Don't suffocate," he suggests.

"M'kay."

He searches briefly for his boxers, but gives up on finding them in the dark and wanders off toward the bathroom naked, feeling weird, like he should hold his hands over his junk. Being in the bathroom is also weird, once his eyes adjust to the light. He's been in other people's bathrooms before, been naked in other girls' bathrooms before, but what he's seeing here is a lived-in bathroom, with toilet paper rolls still in the plastic packaging and a box of tampons sitting on the toilet tank. Well-worn toothbrushes lie next to an uncapped tube of toothpaste; there's a pair of boxer shorts behind the door; Pam's birth control pills are on the sink, right by what has to be Roy's razor. It's another unearned glimpse of her life; he gets to see what she's like when she's living with a guy, without being the guy she's living with. Jim feels lost and alien, like he's stuck in some wacky alternate dimension. 

When he gets back to the bedroom, Pam is asleep on her belly with her right knee and right elbow out to the side and almost touching, like she fell asleep in the middle of an emphatic dance move. He just watches her for a moment, trying to get his bearings, listening to her soft breathing. 

He's not supposed to be here. This isn't his place.

She stirs, lifts her head. "Hey."

"Hey." He climbs back into the bed, feeling strangely more like an invader now than when he was fucking Pam. She moves up against him and he wraps his arms around her, buries his face in her hair. "Mmm. Missed you."

She makes a curious noise. "Wha... how long was I asleep?"

Jim kisses her head softly. "Only a minute or two, I think. I just... I missed you." He can feel all his defenses slipping with that admission, leaving him wide open for whatever betrayal is coming next, but he can't bring himself to care.

"Oh," Pam says. He expects her to stiffen up, pull away, but she just snuggles against him tighter and sighs, a big relaxed sigh that feels like she's let all the air out of her lungs. He smooths a hand up and down her back, feeling her breathing even out and slow, and realizes after a minute that she's gone right back to sleep on him.

This feels too fragile to be real. He can't move for fear of breaking it. He just lies there, feeling her sleeping body warm against his skin, listening to her breath squeak a little where her nose is squashed into his chest.

"I wish I could keep you," he whispers, half-hoping that she'll wake up. She doesn't.


End file.
